Tuesday, 30 November 2010

I was asked by Norman Geras of normblog to write about a book that means a lot to me for his Writer's choice series. I chose 'Orlando: A Seaside Holiday' by Kathleen Hale. You can read the piece here: http://bit.ly/dJBkEC and I will be posting it on my own blog later with some of Kathleen Hale's beautiful illustrations. Norman is husband to Adele Geras whose book 'A Thousand Yards of Sea', I Illustrated many years ago. You can see some of my pictures here: http://joannatroughton.blogspot.com/2010/05/thousand-yards-of-sea.html

Thursday, 11 November 2010

This is an illustration for 'The Devoted Friend' one of Oscar Wilde's Fairy Stories. I painted this picture for JACKANORY many years ago and the programme was shown on BBC TV just before Christmas. The story was read by Alec McCowen and directed by Gordon House. I had to work on A2 size board for JACKANORY so that the camera could move around the picture, picking out the details of the story. For this reason I have scanned this illustration in two halves as I don't possess an A2 scanner. This particular caption was long and thin as it was to used for a panning shot. I don't think there is still a record of this particular JACKANORY as the BBC wiped many programmes after transmission, and it was before the days of video recorders. But I still have most of the captions from this and other JACKANORYs I worked on. The artists involved had to be present at Lime Grove Studios on the day of the recording in case there were any alterations to the artwork needed, and I remember how thrilling this was for a young artist like myself.